There are many critical frameworks we should use to interpret literature, film, art, drama, music, or anything you experience. You might study up to 15 other critical lenses in your college experience. Three of the most useful and relevant frameworks are Marxist literary criticism, Feminist literary criticism, and Freudian literary criticism.

These lenses add insights into our lives and into the literature, film, art, drama, music, or anything else you are experiencing. To be efficient and clear, I will use the word “EXHIBIT” to mean whatever (book, film, painting, play, song, college visit, board game, military situation…) it is that we are studying, analyzing, and examining.

Named after Karl Marx but not promoting communism, this lens helps us examine how socioeconomic factors influence the characters, plot, setting, reader/viewer, author/maker, time period, or any other aspect of an exhibit.

Karl Marx said that human history can be studied best by looking at how the proletariat (lower, working classes; blue collar jobs) interacts with the bourgeoisie (the middle/upper classes; white collar jobs). Louis Althusser added to this theoretical/ critical approach. His term “interpellation ” helps us examine how we are convinced by our oppressive systems to keep doing the miserable work we do for the system (because what is good for the system leads to good conditions for the individual—which, we know is not always the case). Althusser explored how ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) control and sculpt: family, church, work, law, school, arts, sciences…

What Marxist critics do:

A. Make a division between the “overt” (manifest or surface) and “covert” (latent or hidden) content of a literary work

B. Relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author

C. Explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which “produced” it

D. Relate the literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is “consumed” (or read, viewed…)

Is a system oppressive to its members? Does the system exploit its members?

Are there social tensions? Are the ruling classes happy? Are the lower classes miserable? Or, are the lower classes actually happier because they are not as oppressed by their upper/ruling class rigid rule system?

Are the lower/working classes exploited? Does capitalism have a conscience concerning its citizens who are helpless, hopeless, powerless?

Are characters given more/less freedom by their class?

Are any of the characters “suffocated” by their class rules, codes, & costs?

This lens helps us examine how gender is a factor in an exhibit. The main focus is on how women are portrayed, how they function, behave, are limited/privileged for being women. However, we also examine how maleness defines roles & limits men.

Harry Potter Twilight Unforgiven (or any cowboy story) Office Space 1984 Juno The Lion King To Kill a Mockingbird Titanic Dukes of Hazzard Ocean’s 11 Million Dollar Baby The Reader The Odyssey The Ugly Truth 300 P.S. I Love You Superbad The Hangover the circusNo Country for Old Men The Road Book of Eli Lady Gaga perfume ads

This lens helps us examine how inner workings of the brain influence every aspect of an exhibit.

What Freudian/Psychoanalytic critics do:

A. Examine how each character attempts to re-achieve the narcissistic bliss we get to experience as babies; look for a possible “Oedipal complex” in any parent-child type of relationship (need not be biologically related characters; any mentor-protégé relationship may be analyzed like this)

B. Examine how each character attempts to re-achieve a narcissistic bliss of ordered predictability and familiarity (this familiarity might be chaos, as in the case of the Joker of The Dark Knight—he is familiar with chaos, so he continually seeks disorder and creates mayhem). Some characters do things that make them miserable, as if they are determined to be miserable (the sympathy they acquire from other characters and the readers is what they have been seeking all along).

C. Explore the ways the libidos (sex drives) of the author, reader, character(s) work to influence the exhibit.

D. In the Freudian tradition and manner, psychoanalyze all people involved in the exhibit.

We get frustrated. Mufasa is only in power because he is physically strong and male. We realize Scar should be in power: he is smarter. Scar is the only one not given a really cool African name. Mufasa would rather teach Simba how to pounce, attack, and fight than listen to an important bulletin/report from Zazu, his senior advisor/cabinet member.

Timon and Pumba are bachelors who reject their oppressive societies that expect them to be responsible, fatherly, hard-working, and good for the reproducing the modes of production.

Marxist: Can be viewed as the upper class (lions) trying to maintain power over an unhappy lower class (hyenas). The lower class resents the privileges of better food and hunting grounds that the upper class maintains. This conflict causes a rebellion, which disrupts the normal social order causing chaos and destruction.

Reveals that Nala should be the one in power. She can physically whip Simba (when they are young and when they are mature); and physical domination is valued in this society. She is more loyal, responsible, intelligent, diligent, and unselfish than Simba, who is pretty pathetic.

Shows how subservient all the female lions are. They do all the work, get none of the credit, and must share partners. Mufasa has at least ten sexual partners he gets to enjoy and impregnate. Sarabi is demure, passive, pretty, a dutiful possession.

Shows Pride Rock as a phallic symbol of male prominence and domination.

A Freudian lens also shows us the reasons Simba stays with Timon and Pumba. These two bachelors are free from responsibility and offer a sort of narcissistic bliss that Freud theorized we are always trying to re-achieve after we lose the bliss we once experienced as babies (completely cared for; without responsibility or stress; not inhibited or judged or oppressed by society yet).

The Lion King is also a lot like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a highly psychological play with Oedipal leanings.

Does Ron Weasley eat excessively because he comes from a poor home—and he needs to feel full? Does he eat greedily because he has never been able to?

Is Harry Potter special for any other reason than he won the genetic lottery and was granted a certain gift, never having done anything to earn this gift?

Much discussion has exposed JK Rowling as an obvious Marxist, attempting to pollute the minds of our youth with Communist propaganda. The “pure-blood” Slytherins represent the aristocracy, who believe that “magic” (i.e. capital) should be in the hands of a privileged elite. The “clever” Ravenclaws represent the bourgeoisie, who collude with the aristocracy in the suppression of the petty-bourgeois Hufflepuffs and the proletarian house-elves. The brave Gryffindors (who wear red Quidditch robes) and Dumbledore’s Army represent the Red Army, the true army of the proletariat.